America’s Gun Problem Is Impossible

Plain English with Derek Thompson

The Ringer

News, News Commentary

4.7 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 26 May 2022

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Texas school shooting is part of a grisly ritual in American life. A tragedy, followed by mourning, followed by inaction, followed by several months, followed by another tragedy. What can be done? What WILL be done? This episode isn’t about false hope. It’s about information. The New York Times’s German Lopez, who has been reporting on guns and gun control policy for many years, joins the podcast to answer as many questions as we can fit into a show, including: Why are school shootings becoming more common in the U.S.? What are the most successful gun control policies at our disposal? Why doesn’t Washington ever do anything about this problem? What happens now? Oh, and Derek will be off next week. New episodes will return in early June! Host: Derek Thompson Guest: German Lopez Producer: Devon Manze Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	What's up guys Rachel Lindsay here and I am teaming up with your favorite
0:04.0	Ringer podcasters to deliver the bravo drama and news that you've been craving on morally corrupt.
0:10.3	It's the show about all things bravo from the housewives to summer house and everything
0:16.0	in between. We'll be mentioning it all every week. Check it out on Spotify and the Ringer.com.
0:22.9	Today's episode is about America guns and the latest mass shooting at a school in Texas.
0:34.4	This massacre is the second deadliest school shooting in American history after Sandy Hook
0:39.6	in Connecticut and these similarities are absolutely eerie. In that tragedy the Sandy Hook
0:47.6	tragedy a young man shot the woman he was living with his mother before carrying out the brutal
0:53.2	murder of 20 children and six adults at the local elementary school before he died. This week 10
1:01.2	years later another young man shot the woman he was living with his grandmother before carrying
1:06.1	out the brutal murder of 19 children and two adults at the local elementary school before he died.
1:12.2	Mass shootings have become a kind of collective tragic ritual in American society.
1:18.0	Tragedy strikes we see the news we mourn we cry we express outrage nothing is done. Time passes
1:27.1	tragedy strikes we see the news we mourn we cry out we express outrage nothing is done.
1:33.2	America's gun violence problem is impossible and I want to understand why.
1:40.2	My guest today is the New York Times Perman Lopez. He wrote this week's Times Morning Newsletter
1:46.4	about the Texas massacre and he's been writing about America's gun crisis for years.
1:50.3	In fact when I went to find his old work at Vox I noticed that most the stuff he wrote many years
1:56.4	ago was just updated over and over and over and over and over and over every time a new mass shooting
2:02.4	made his old reporting newly relevant. I want you to think about that for a second that this is
2:09.3	a unique American crisis in that no event is unique the details just repeat themselves so
2:14.5	frequently the journalists don't even have to write new stories to tell people what happened.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Ringer, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Ringer and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.